Call for developers: QBzr and Bazaar Explorer needs you!

[Ian Clatworthy]

We're not far away from Bazaar 2.1 or Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) for that
matter. Lucid is a Long Term Support (LTS) release supported for 3 years
on the desktop. It's also a release where there's an emphasis on
"cleaning up the little stuff" aka "the 100 papercuts projects".

I'd like to see the Bazaar GUI community tackle our "papercuts" in
coming months. Rather than existing developers changing their
priorities, I'd like to encourage more Bazaar developers to have a go at
making small changes to qbzr or explorer. It's really very simple to
make many changes simply by copying-and-pasting existing code. If 10 new
developers fixed just one small problem per month this year, our GUIs
would be even better!

So what are the small papercuts I'm thinking of? Every time our GUI
requires an extra click it shouldn't, that's a papercut. If you need
some inspiration, here are some things that users have recently raised:

* qupdate could start immediately. Or it could optionally do that if
--run was provided as an option.

* qpush could start immediately if --run was given and the push location
wasn't empty.

* qmerge could have an extra browse button for selecting files rather
than just directories.

* qmerge could have the list of branches in the repository in the combo
drop down.

* ditto qswitch.

* qrun could have a Terminal button in the button box. That would launch
a shell. (Then Explorer users selecting Advanced commands could still
get to a terminal easily when qrun was configured to launch for that
action.)

* qviewer could have a Refresh button. (That's particularly useful when
viewing the System Log.)

* explorer could listen to filesystem changes and refresh more often
implicitly. (To begin with, both Manage Tools > Refresh Tools and Manage
Bookmarks > Refresh Bookmarks could disappear.)

There are plenty more listed on the QBzr and Explorer bug pages. More
importantly, I'd encourage developers keen to join us to pick something
that annoy you.

I'm sure most Python programmers would have no problems fixing most of
the above given a willingness to get in try it (and support from the
qbzr mailing list as required). You really don't need to know PyQt
beforehand, just where to look to learn pieces as you go [#].

Please consider joining the qbzr developers and tackling one or the
above or some little thing that annoys you.

Ian C.

[#] e.g.
http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/static/Docs/PyQt4/html/modules.html